Zing This!

By William Gilreath

The book covers the origin, history, implementation, and software architecture of the Zing network utility. The reader will explore utilizing, operating, and the functionality of the Zing network utility that are examined and discussed in depth.  

 

The text serves as a guide for using the Zing network utility and as a source for future reference of details and specifics. By the end of the book, the reader will learn and discover how the Zing network utility can be a valuable tool in your toolbox or a weapon in your arsenal.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Gilreath
• Release date: Mar 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224428151

Book preview

Disclaimer

This e-book has been written for information purposes only. Every effort has been made to make this e-book as complete and accurate as possible. However, there may be mistakes in typography or content. Also, this e-book provides information only up to the publishing date. Therefore, this e-book should be a guide, not the ultimate source.

The purpose of this e-book is to educate. The author and the publisher do not warrant that the information contained in this e-book is fully complete and shall not be responsible for any errors or omissions. The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity concerning any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this e-book.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Dedication

This book and the text are dedicated to a very much adored cat, my special kitty: 

Jaguaro or Jaggie who I lost by cruel caprice.

A very dear cat that was a friend, and companion—taken too soon, missed forever, and loved eternally.

Chapter 1. Rationale

This overview or introduction is the rationale, the reason I created, wrote, and am documenting the zing network utility.

1.1 Motivation

My original motivation to create zing, the zero-packet ping or zero-packet Internet groper was to create a tool or utility like ping, yet one that is lighter in terms of network packets.

Another motive was simply to try out the idea, to create and implement what I considered something that is in retrospect, so obvious, and deceptively simple that no one else had thought of it.

1.2 Goals

The overall goal of the zing network utility is to be not a replacement, but a complement in addition to ping in terms of network speed, performance, and presence of systems.

The function of the zing network utility is to provide information about the existence, presence, and time to reach a host on a network.

The three overall long-term goals of the zing network utility are:

•  Ubiquity for the widespread use of the zing network utility on different computer systems.

•  Knowledge for utilizing and using the zing network utility.

•  Proliferation or porting the zing network utility to other computer systems.

This book is to spread knowledge so that others can add it as a tool to their toolbox, or another weapon in the arsenal.

A long-term goal of zing is to be ubiquitous, hence I have open-sourced the zing network utility, put the source code out on GitHub in a public repository, and encourage porting zing into other programming languages on other platforms.

The power is in the understanding, sharing, and proliferation of zing as a network utility. Excelsior!

Chapter 2. History and Origin

The zing network utility ultimately started (as some things do in high tech...) as a conversation between me and another colleague.

2.1 Origin of the Idea

For the backstory, at the time I was on a team where much of the software was network-focused,